The old truism, “Be careful what you ask for because you might get it” came to mind last night when I went to get the cheese for the Wine Tasting.
I visited the Deli in the centre of Castelldefels. It is a gastronomically beautiful place, but perhaps I should have been alerted by the fact that the shop name was emblazoned in a terminally elegant script. I had previously visited this establishment for an eye-wateringly expensive piece of cheddar and had been impressed by the knowledge of the person serving me and the fact that he knew about Wales.
This visit was for the selection of Catalan cheeses which are to be an accompaniment to the array (selection seems far too mild a word) of wines that have been purchased for the occasion.
Feeling fairly confident about what to ask for I informed the shop assistant that I wanted a “surtido de quesos” which means a selection of cheeses. I should perhaps have remembered the way that this innocent sounding request is interpreted in restaurants.
I watched in something approaching horror as the selection of cheeses were pared of their rinds and then carefully cut into bite sized segments and arranged artfully on a golden plate. At my request small cards were written to inform gourmands of the name of the cheese that they were sampling. This hand carving of already expensive cheese took so long that I could barely walk when I finally staggered away from the shop clutching a bag which contained a cardboard construction which in turn contained a bad which contained the cheese.
I paid by card because I do not think that I could have stayed the tears if I had had to hand over sheaves of money!
As getting the cheese was one of the three tasks that I had set myself for today I am now reduced to two: constructing the booklet for the tasting and getting some sort of metal construction to which to attach me bike to discourage the thieves who regard our part of the world as one large free shop!
Our new next door neighbours continue to disappoint. One of their bloody dogs has obviously been partially de-barked and its emasculated efforts sound like two rocks being ground together in a distant room. The other animal, however, is of the full throated variety and barks at anything that moves, anywhere in the vicinity and when tired of that emits a mournful howl. I hate it.
The ironic aspect of this cacophonous menagerie is that when the mendacious owner first arrived and engaged in conversation one of his first questions was whether this neighbourhood was noisy! I said that apart from the occasional aeroplane the noisiest aspect of living here were the dogs. In my innocence I had thought that he valued silence, not that he was going to shatter it!
And as if that were not enough, we now have only two months left before the arrival of The Scumbags who infest the house on the other side of us for the summer months. The Scumbags also have a crippled dog which has to be decorously arranged on the grass by his doting owners so that he can take the sun. His bark sounds as though someone (and the idea has certainly passed through my mind) is sticking a long, sharp pin into him in one of the areas where the thing still has feeling!
The periods of silence between the monomaniac yelps of the demented dog are almost as hard to bear as the noise the thing makes as you are waiting for the next bark.
It is now almost lunchtime and I have merely assembled the determination to do something rather than having achieved much! The information I have to present this evening is all on the coffee table in front of me; the ideas for the cover are stirring yeastily in my mind all it needs is action for things to happen.
A later entry will inform you whether I have done things in good time or waited for the adrenalin to kick in to get things done when there isn’t really the time left!
I am trying to get used to skimmed milk again. Not even real skimmed milk but rather the long-life variety. It says much for the way that I drink tea that my first cups of skimmed milk adulterated milk were not the shock I remember from the experience of Tesco red pack aged milk which, as far as I can remember, was vaguely white liquid and about as far removed from the dairy product that I relish as Alpha Centuri is from The Horse Head Nebula. I don’t actually know how far that is, but it must be more than a 15 minute drive!
Now to taste or ‘taste’ wine!
I visited the Deli in the centre of Castelldefels. It is a gastronomically beautiful place, but perhaps I should have been alerted by the fact that the shop name was emblazoned in a terminally elegant script. I had previously visited this establishment for an eye-wateringly expensive piece of cheddar and had been impressed by the knowledge of the person serving me and the fact that he knew about Wales.
This visit was for the selection of Catalan cheeses which are to be an accompaniment to the array (selection seems far too mild a word) of wines that have been purchased for the occasion.
Feeling fairly confident about what to ask for I informed the shop assistant that I wanted a “surtido de quesos” which means a selection of cheeses. I should perhaps have remembered the way that this innocent sounding request is interpreted in restaurants.
I watched in something approaching horror as the selection of cheeses were pared of their rinds and then carefully cut into bite sized segments and arranged artfully on a golden plate. At my request small cards were written to inform gourmands of the name of the cheese that they were sampling. This hand carving of already expensive cheese took so long that I could barely walk when I finally staggered away from the shop clutching a bag which contained a cardboard construction which in turn contained a bad which contained the cheese.
I paid by card because I do not think that I could have stayed the tears if I had had to hand over sheaves of money!
As getting the cheese was one of the three tasks that I had set myself for today I am now reduced to two: constructing the booklet for the tasting and getting some sort of metal construction to which to attach me bike to discourage the thieves who regard our part of the world as one large free shop!
Our new next door neighbours continue to disappoint. One of their bloody dogs has obviously been partially de-barked and its emasculated efforts sound like two rocks being ground together in a distant room. The other animal, however, is of the full throated variety and barks at anything that moves, anywhere in the vicinity and when tired of that emits a mournful howl. I hate it.
The ironic aspect of this cacophonous menagerie is that when the mendacious owner first arrived and engaged in conversation one of his first questions was whether this neighbourhood was noisy! I said that apart from the occasional aeroplane the noisiest aspect of living here were the dogs. In my innocence I had thought that he valued silence, not that he was going to shatter it!
And as if that were not enough, we now have only two months left before the arrival of The Scumbags who infest the house on the other side of us for the summer months. The Scumbags also have a crippled dog which has to be decorously arranged on the grass by his doting owners so that he can take the sun. His bark sounds as though someone (and the idea has certainly passed through my mind) is sticking a long, sharp pin into him in one of the areas where the thing still has feeling!
The periods of silence between the monomaniac yelps of the demented dog are almost as hard to bear as the noise the thing makes as you are waiting for the next bark.
It is now almost lunchtime and I have merely assembled the determination to do something rather than having achieved much! The information I have to present this evening is all on the coffee table in front of me; the ideas for the cover are stirring yeastily in my mind all it needs is action for things to happen.
A later entry will inform you whether I have done things in good time or waited for the adrenalin to kick in to get things done when there isn’t really the time left!
I am trying to get used to skimmed milk again. Not even real skimmed milk but rather the long-life variety. It says much for the way that I drink tea that my first cups of skimmed milk adulterated milk were not the shock I remember from the experience of Tesco red pack aged milk which, as far as I can remember, was vaguely white liquid and about as far removed from the dairy product that I relish as Alpha Centuri is from The Horse Head Nebula. I don’t actually know how far that is, but it must be more than a 15 minute drive!
Now to taste or ‘taste’ wine!
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